by: Michael Barnes

Tekken Hybrid is an awkward product that seems to have nothing to offer to anyone aside from diehard (and undiscerning) fans of Namco Bandai’s storied fighting franchise. Effectively, it’s a promo package for next year’s release of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and there is a “prologue” of that game included. There is also the feature length animated film Tekken: Blood Vengeance on the Blu-Ray along with an HD remaster of the vintage Tekken Tag Tournament. At first glance, that sounds like a lot of Jin Kazama for your 40 bucks. But what you’re really buying here- aside from a crass marketing scheme- is a 1080p version of a decade-old PS2 game, a demo, and a practically unwatchable 90 minute FMV cutscene that will likely not appeal to anyone over the age of 12.

Really, the main event here is that HD remaster of Tekken Tag Tournament. It remains a very good, fun-to-play fighting game that features a tagging mechanic allowing four fighters (and potentially four players) to get in on the game’s button-heavy combo-bashing and polygonal beat-downs. Over 35 characters are featured including more or less any and all drunken masters, kangaroos, robots, devils, and foxy boxers that appeared in the first three Tekken games. The game is exactly how you remember it and the qualities that have made it something of a fondly remembered and still beloved cult favorite remain. It’s the only Tekken, at least until its sequel releases, to feature the team play concept.

It’s still a solid game. Fighting games don’t necessarily age like other genres, even though Tekken Bowl isn’t nearly as much fun as you remember it being. The problem is that this is literally a 1:1 remaster with no new content or even online play added to bring it up to date. It’s a crying shame that you can’t hook up with your old high school or college buddies over PSN for old time’s sake. It looks decent, but definitely nowhere near as good as Tekken 6 or any recent Capcom or Aksys fighting game. They’re old models touched up and the backgrounds are obviously improved, but you wouldn’t mistake this for a 2011 title. Especially if you’re listening to the lo-fi, apparently un-remastered sound effects and music.

But if you’re looking toward the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue as a selling point, you’d best just save your money and buy the full release when it hits the stores. The good news is that the sample demonstrates that the sequel will likely succeed at bringing the TTT experience into the modern age. The bad news is that this is nothing more than a demo that should be available as a free download on Xbox Live or Playstation Network.

Four characters including newcomer Alisa and a couple of stages are all you’re getting out of this. There’s a model viewer, but frankly I’ve never understood the appeal of those kinds of superfluous features. I guess they’re good for the people that want to cosplay Armor King or whatever and need to get a good look at that jaguar mask. After about ten minutes of play, I think even the most hardcore Tekken fan will shelve it and just wait for the full game.